On May 12th, 2023 Clay and I both attended our first Young Adults event at Jefferson Baptist Church. As of that day, I had officially finished my undergraduate degree at LSU and thought it was fitting to join the Young Adults ministry. Given that he and his family were very new to Jefferson, Clay also thought going to the Young Adult BBQ was a good idea. As it turns out, that summer in Baton Rouge was brutally hot, so the barbeque turned into a hamburger dinner inside of the Brubakers’ house. At dinner I had the honor of an adorable guy sitting across the table from me. I thought he already knew everyone and that I was just out of the loop from being in the college ministry. I did not talk to him much, but we braved the heat enough to play a few games of cornhole outside after dinner. Each of us played in separate games, but we were able to talk to each other on the sidelines. I genuinely cannot remember a lick of what we talked about, except that he told me that I would need to “Get over that,” when I said I was embarrassed to play a game in front of others given my lack of athleticism.

In a random surge of confidence I followed him on Instagram THAT NIGHT to try to find out more information about this dude…but it was a sorry attempt, giving me no additional information except that he liked to hunt and that he drove a truck (shocker). I told my sister about him on the phone the next day, and expressed that I could see him being a good guy for my close friend Chelsey. We later were both invited to eat at an Indian restaurant with friends, to which I realized that I did not want him to be with Chelsey after all ;)

To celebrate the end of the semester, I went home to my familia in Texas; while I was there, I told my mom about my “bold moves” to follow a cute guy on Instagram. Unbeknownst to me, Clay was also doing his research in my absence by asking mutual friends about the gal he met at this new church he had been visiting. On June 4th, 2023 I drove back to my friends in Louisiana who had thrown me a surprise birthday party; I got home late, only to open up Instagram to see a DM from my future fiancé, enclosed with a friendly Happy Birthday and a flirty joke. We have texted every day since then.

From there, we texted and talked on the phone over the span of a few weeks and got to see each other at weekly small group Bible studies. Unfortunately, as every individual in a Christian college ministry or young adults group will tell you, girls only talk to girls and guys to guys. To cross over to talk to the other gender would essentially tell everyone that we were talking. It was a very frustrating process to see the guy I had been talking to on the phone standing across the room and not get to speak to him! As a result, after Grant’s small group study one night, I finally got the nerve to ask him if he was up for some Andy’s Frozen Custard. Being that he had no clue what that was, I thought it was a good opportunity to finally get to spend some time alone with him (even though he did not finish his Triple Chocolate Concrete). To this day, I do not consider this our first date…as I used my gift card, was not dressed for the occasion, and I asked him first…but you can decide. Date or not, I’m thrilled that that was not the end of our story!